After the Lakewood School District Board of Directors approved the general contractor bid for the new Lakewood High School of Allied Construction Associates, Inc. on March 2, the project got off to a soft start on March 10.

“The first order of business is to secure the site, so they’ll be putting fencing up,” Mack said. “They’ll be laying it out around the entire track and field area, as well as the bus turnaround. They’ll also be staging equipment on site.”

This has required school district groundskeepers to move plants from the greenhouse area, to make room for a new service road for construction vehicles.

“We’ll be modifying our spring plant sale as a result, possibly by doing a joint sale with Marysville or Arlington,” Mack said.

As early as March 12 or 14, Mack estimated that passersby could see cement-grinding on site, as a prelude to nearly non-stop earth-work.

“Once this gets going, we’re going to have tandem trucks, moving dirt in and out, every seven minutes,” Mack said. “That adds up to more than three hundred cement trucks’ worth just for the foundation, and enough steel to fill a hundred school buses.”

At the height of construction, Mack expects as many as 125 workers on site, and a crane within the next two weeks. An official groundbreaking ceremony is set to follow in mid-April.

“My plea to the public is for patience,” said Mack, who acknowledged the traffic congestion that would ensue. “It’s going to be such a nice school that it’ll all be worth it.”

The base bid at almost $48.5 million was the apparent lowest of seven bids submitted. The new school will replace the existing high school, which opened in 1983.

Mack said Allied has a record of quality construction work.

The new school will be built just to the south of the existing school. It will open for the September start for the 2017 school year. The old school will be demolished and replaced with a new soccer filed and tennis courts.

District residents approved a bond issue for the new school project in April of 2014.